Dropping the price on perishable food before it goes bad is a staple of supermarket strategy.
Its kind of like airline seat pricing, only in reverse.
Weve all seen special offers on short-dated items in the supermarket.
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The problem is, often these reductions come too late.
The time, then, is ripe for a better way.
“It can predict both supply and demand trends, so the ordering is more efficient.
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It can also strategically reduce prices to move soon to be perished items.”
Wasteless
Supermarket stock control is already heavily reliant on AI.
The computer brain can track trends and anticipate seasonal demand much better than humans.
It can then automatically vary prices.
The other part of this equation is electronic price labels.
You may have seen these in some stores already.
E-ink shelf labels can be updated wirelessly from the central computer, which makes the whole procedure seamless.
“The AI algorithms required are not complex,” says Verma.
The barriers are only in the cost of implementation, then.
The technology is both available and mature.
It just needs to be deployed.
Thats an easier sell for big supermarkets, who can more easily amortize their investments.
In fact, for these big chains, food waste is not a problem of sustainability or the environment.
Its just a big waste of money.
Happily, solving one handily solves the other.
Food Waste
In 2019,food waste in the US cost more than $400 billion.
Thats a third of all food produced, not sold.
And thats before you even get to the food that we waste at home and so on.
In reality, this hasnt happened.
“There has been recent research that suggests that these fears are overblown,” says Verma.
